TEXAS LAST MEAL
EDWARD GREEN III
OCTOBER 5, 2004

...Peanut...

Last Meal: Two chicken fried steaks, fried chicken strips, fried shrimp, curly fries, a half-gallon of grape juice, a pint of carmel pecan fudge, ketchup and a pack of bubble gum.

The skinny: Green, 30, was executed for killing an elderly Houston couple in a 1992 robbery.

The execution came after a last-minute appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court failed and just days after lawmakers proposed a halt in executions in the area owing to problems with the examination of evidence by the Houston Police Department.

Harris County, of which Houston is the greater part, sentences more people to death than any other county in the United States. It currently has 162 inmates on Texas death row. At least one person has been freed and 40 other convictions are under scrutiny because of the police department's poor work. The late appeal delayed Green's execution for two hours.

More skinny: Green, known on the street as "Peanut," said he was high after smoking marijuana and embalming fluid when he and a friend confronted a car that had pulled up to a stop sign. Green spotted the couple in a car at a Houston street intersection and decided to rob them because they looked as if they had money. Green pointed a .357 revolver at the man, who was driving, and demanded he get out the vehicle. When the man laughed and attempted to shift the car into reverse, Green fired three shots, hitting him in the head and chest and the woman in an arm and the abdomen.

Green was later arrested for an unrelated crime and after a Crimestoppers tip, was interviewed by police about the murder. After initially denying involvement, Green gave a complete confession.

Green was no stranger to authorities. He had been expelled from school, wound up at a juvenile camp after a rape accusation and was tied to numerous car thefts.

Final words and such: "To the ..... families, I do not come here with the intention to make myself out to be a person I am not. I never claimed to be the best person. I'm not the best father, I'm not the best son or the best friend in the world. To my family and to you people, I can only apologize for the pain I have caused you. May God forgive us on this day. I'm ready when you are."

Green's mother sobbed uncontrollably as she watched her son die. She collapsed and had to be assisted from the room. A second witness was placed in a wheelchair briefly.

Outside the red-brick walls of the Huntsville prison, about 50 anti-death penalty activists held signs decrying Green's execution. One man, David Atwood, of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, said he was starting a bread-and-water fast to protest the upcoming series of executions.

A DME.COM FIRST...Green and a corrections officer became romantically involved and had a daughter, now 5. The woman resigned rather than be fired, and she married Green by proxy.

Factoids: Green was the....

46th murderer executed in U.S. in 2004
931st murderer executed in U.S. since 1976
14th murderer executed in Texas in 2004
327th murderer executed in Texas since 1976

POETRY BY EDWARD GREEN III

WHO AM I ?........

Sometimes I try too hard
thinking that competing with self will reward
my heart with the foundation of knowledge
that only the depths of my soul can acknowledge.
This is why my determination decision
seems to appear more and more like a mission
allowing my growth and development to be something scholastic
while the balance of my life is man made, afraid and drastic,
There is no one but myself to blame
because throughout all the pleasures, I've searched for the pain.
that can bring me gravely closer to only knowing myself
while others wish to know nothing about me...but the means for my death.